Principal Investigator

Heather B. Mayes

Heather studied humanities at Harvard University before realizing that she is a chemical engineer. She received her BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She then worked for three years as a chemical engineering consultant on projects including new technology development, process safety, and meeting new EPA standards. To deepen her knowledge, she returned to school and received her PhD in chemical engineering from Northwestern University in the summer of 2015. Dr. Linda J. Broadbelt at Northwestern advised her and Dr. Gregg T. Beckham of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory co-advised her as she employed computational chemical engineering to uncover the molecular mechanisms that underlie thermal and enzymatic cellulose decomposition toward advancing technologies that will produce sustainable chemicals and fuels. She was a Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellow and earned the AIChE Computational Molecular Science and Engineering Forum Graduate Student Award and ACS Chemical Computing Group Research Excellence Award. She deferred begining her position at the University of Michigan for a short postdoctoral scholar position at the University of Chicago, where she developed a multiscale kinetic modeling approach to capture the stochastic nature of coupled ion transport in a transmembrane antiporter. At the University of Michigan, she works to elucidate protein-carbohydrate interactions for applications in renewable energy and glycobiology.

Graduate Students

Tucker Burgin

Tucker earned his BS and MS in Biomedical Engineering (with a concentration in Chemical Engineering) through a combined degree program at the University of Rochester. He conducted research with the Nanomembranes Research Group and the McGrath Lab, and his MS thesis work centered on building models to support the application of ultra-thin silicon membranes to highly efficient, wearable hemodialysis devices.

Alexander Adams

Alex earned his BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Florida. He worked at Harris Corporation on signal filtering through photonic communication links and at Honeywell on process automation for nylon. He also participated in the Scientific Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program at Oak Ridge National Lab where he worked on high performance Li-ion battery anodes produced from recycled rubber tire waste. Alex is co-advised by Dr. Sharon Glotzer.

Emma Purcell

Emma earned her BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of California San Diego.
She completed an REU through the Colorado Centre for Biofuels and Biorefining in Matthew Posewitz’s lab at the Colorado School of Mines. While in the Posewitz lab, she worked on the metabolic engineering of cyanobacteria for biofuels applications.
After finishing her BS, she traveled to New Zealand and worked at the University of Canterbury in Renwick Dobson’s lab on the development and design of microfluidic chips for artificial lipid bilayer formation. Emma is co-advised by Dr. Sunitha Nagrath.

Youngwoo Woo

Youngwoo earned his BS in Materials Science and Engineering from Seoul National University before joining the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan to pursue a Master’s degree. He joined the Mayes group to pursue his interest in in data science within chemical engineering, and is exploring how glycosylation affects protein physical properties.

Chloe Luyet

Chloe earned her BS in Chemical Engineering from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She also has a minor in Spanish language and was a member of the Women’s Golf Team. She did undergraduate research in Jeffrey Potoff’s lab, using molecular dynamics to investigate the effects of fluorination on the interfacial properties of alcohols and carboxylic acids.

Ray Asare

Ray earned his BS in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While there, he worked on research projects involving Alzheimer’s disease, antibody stability, drug delivery, and analytical chemistry. After graduating, he stayed in Massachusetts to join Sanofi as part of a purification process development team devoted to process lifecycle management for various biologics drug substance operations.



Previous Undergraduate Students

Justin Huber

Justin Huber worked with Team Mayes and Blue in a variety of capacities from 2017 through 2018, using his computational expertise to advance a variety of projects.

Sam Greeley

Sam Greeley worked with Team Mayes and Blue team through the SURE program in the summer of 2018 and into the fall, working with Tucker Burgin.

Jason Fannin

Jason joined Team Mayes & Blue shortly after transfering to the University of Michigan from Washtenaw Community College. He is worked with Alex Adams on modeling sugar transport into cells.

Carly Prast

Carly Prast worked with Emma Purcell from 2017-2018, using COMSOL Multiphysics to simulate microfluidic focusing of exosomes for cancer diagnostics.

Rohith Pentaparthy

Rohith worked in our group in the summer of 2017, when he was a rising Senior undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, majoring in Data Science and minoring in Biochemistry. He is originally from Okemos, Michigan and worked on modeling modifications of sugar transport proteins in an effort to improve conversion efficiency.

Samantha Schwartz

Sam was the first undergraduate to join Team Mayes & Blue, as a second-semester junior at the University of Michigan, majoring in Chemical Engineering and minoring in Computer science. She performed QM simulations of monosaccharide reactions, determining how to best model the conformational changes during the reactions.

Previous Master’s Students

Stephen Vicchio

Stephen was the first member of Team Mayes & Blue, joining before Prof. Mayes started at Michigan. During his time in the group he worked on determining how different computational methods differently map carbohydrate potential energy surfaces.